Laughter and Light
by stereolightning
Summary: George invites Angelina to the Burrow for Harry's eighteenth birthday. She's not sure if it's a date or not. Pranking ensues. Among other things.


_**A/N** For Lokken.8, who always leaves thoughtful reviews! _

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The funny thing about funny people is that they are often melancholic people, too. The weeping clown, the depressive comedian - these stock characters prowl at the fringes of Angelina's imagination when she sees George at Fred's funeral, pale in his dark suit, like a ghost, a carbon copy of the dead, but with freckles in the wrong places. Fred had a Cassiopeia of freckles across his nose; George has Orion's belt. And George is missing an ear, of course. Perhaps his ear is in the beyond with Fred, still listening to his jokes, like some transceiver for a wireless that extends to the afterlife. Because as much as she looks for it, as much as she searches for it in George's bearing or his expression, the grim joker character is not there.

He is still who he was – subdued, yes, two months after his brother's death – but it would be imprecise to say that George is depressive. It's not _clinical._ He doesn't walk around looking like a Dementor has taken up residence above the joke shop with him. (Verity is his new roommate, actually, and Angelina is nervous about this for a while, until she realizes that Verity fancies the blonde girl behind the counter at Fortescue's.) So he's quiet, and he laughs more quietly – or perhaps it's just that there were always two of them laughing before, hence twice the volume. Hard to say. There has never been a moment before when there was only _one_. Even on dates – such as they were (that sweaty grope in the rosebushes at the Yule Ball perhaps wasn't a proper date, or anyway that's what Alicia Spinnet says) – but even then, Angelina could never quite lose George. You could never _really_ get one twin on his own. It was a package deal. Buy one, get one free. An "A" side and a "B" side.

So maybe George is the "B" side – the mellow music you play at the end of the party, when you pick up the empty goblets and wipe the smudged mascara out of your eyes and say goodnight. Not the boisterous let's-get-this-started "A" side that you play as guests arrive.

Angelina cannot tell yet whether that's just what George is like when you get him on his own, or if that's just this summer, this awful summer. This summer of funeral after funeral, of casting a _Tergio_ on your one good black dress every day for a fortnight.

And another thing is, when you lose your lover, you see him everywhere. Your eyes and ears play tricks on you. You see him in strangers out of the corner of your eye, you hear his laugh from across a crowded pub. This phenomenon is so well-known among Angelina's friends now – they who have lost a brace of boyfriends – that she knows she's not the only one who sees apparitions of dead lovers in strange places. Except in this case, there really _is _someone who looks just like Fred when her pupils dart up to confirm her peripheral vision. She comes round the joke shop sometimes, and she watches his sun-dusted hands run over the ledger, watches his lips move as he does sums in his head, and they are the same hands and lips she knew from hasty snogs on the muddy Quidditch pitch with Fred. Oddly, though, it's not eerie. It's nice.

In July, he asks her to the Burrow for Harry's birthday. She says yes.

Everyone attends the party – Hermione and all the Weasleys, of course, plus Andromeda Tonks, Teddy Lupin, Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, and a few others Angelina hasn't met but who are probably Aurors, to judge from their over-caffeinated body language.

Teddy Lupin has become Mr. Popular this summer, and Harry, newly returned from Australia with windburned winter cheeks, is only too happy to melt into the background and let Andromeda and Teddy absorb the love and hope and tears of his friends for a while. Harry was the Boy Who Lived for nearly two decades; let Teddy be the Boy Who Reminds Us To Live. And Teddy does – burbling, cooing, and vomiting for emphasis. At three months old, he is nearing the age when babies begin to laugh. But it hasn't happened yet. Ginny and Bill have a two-galleon wager riding on whether Teddy's laugh will sound like Lupin's soft chuckle or Tonks' mad cackle. (Of course, it could be neither, and Ron's taken odds on that.) And there are hours of fun and fascination to be had just from watching Teddy's tiny face cycle through smiles and frowns and deadly-serious stares (because yes, this is the child of an Auror _and_ a werewolf-cum-professor, and not to be messed with) as his hair shifts from gold to periwinkle blue to his godfather's black. The effect reminds Angelina of the lights in a dance club in Leicester Square – the soft pulsing of colored bulbs as U2 thrummed through the floorboards. _But I stiiiilllllll haven't found what I'm lookin' fo-or..._ Yes, Teddy is the light at this party.

And George is a good date. He introduces Angelina warmly to the few people she hasn't met. He plates up her roast chicken for her.

Then, before the presents, he leads her into the deserted kitchen. Molly is deep in conversation with Andromeda, bouncing that rainbow-haired baby on her hip, and Harry's cake is momentarily unguarded. Which is exactly what George has been waiting for, it transpires.

"Come and have some icing," he says, winking at Angelina.

She sidles up to him, and he paints a dab of Gryffindor-red buttercream across her upper lip. She licks it off. Damn, but Molly has a gift for cooking. As George does for flirting.

"Won't Harry be upset that we've started in on his cake before he's blown out the candles?" Angelina asks.

"Nah," says George, twirling his wand in one hand, a flashy gesture more stage magician than wizard. "He won't notice."

He flicks his wand at Molly's lovingly piped gold letters, which wobble and shift from "Happy Birthday, Harry" to "Hairy Birthday, Happy."

"Oh, very nice," says Angelina, smiling with her voice.

"Ta, very much, Ange," says George. He brushes her arm with his elbow just a tad too deliberately to be mistaken for clumsiness. And anyway, he's a beater - he moves with purpose - and she knows it. She nudges his boot with her sandal-clad foot.

"Cake!" says Ron, blustering into the kitchen with characteristic lack of regard for other people's romantic tete-a-tetes. He lost a little weight in Australia while fetching Hermione's parents; perhaps that's why he's so excited about dessert.

"Yes, Ron, why don't you bring this out to the party," says George. "Ange and I were just admiring our mother's domestic prowess."

Ron levitates the cake with his wand. "Come and sing to Harry," he says.

"But of course," says Angelina, following George's lead by _not_ pointing out the rearranged wording on the cake. She flicks her wand at the cake and conjures eighteen candles, which plant themselves atop the cake and blossom like dandelions with perfect yellow heads of flame.

"Nice move," whispers George in her ear as they return to the boisterous sitting room.

"Ta, very much, George," she says.

The guests are already singing as their three-person processional enters the room. _Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you..._

Harry reads his cake aloud and snickers. Molly's eyes flick to George, but Molly chokes down the admonition that she's clearly itching to hurl at her son, because it's too warm a moment, and maybe because she can't quite bring herself to say just "George!" and not "Boys!" like she used to.

Harry thanks everyone – gracious as ever. Nothing about him has really changed, Angelina thinks. He's defeated Voldemort many times over, and undergone far more freaky supernatural ordeals than your average wizard, but he's the same kind, well-spoken kid who half-inhaled a snitch at eleven years old in their first match together. If anything, he just looks more _relaxed_.

"Tuck in," says Molly, divvying up the cake into neat slices with a casual slash of her wand. (This wand killed Bellatrix Lestrange, but it also cuts cake like nobody's business.)

Angelina is about to put fork to sponge when George leans close and whispers, "I'd hold off on that if I were you."

She raises an eyebrow at him. His eyes glitter with mirth. "Alright," she says.

A moment later, after everyone else has taken a bite, she understands why.

Harry's guests are sprouting curious growths of the follicular variety – mustaches, Dumbledore-worthy beards, furry knuckles, and unibrows. Luna has cat whiskers. Kingsley Shacklebolt has mutton chops.

_Hairy birthday_, indeed.

Harry notices first and starts snickering. Awareness dawns on the other guests in waves, and there are outraged yelps and howls of laughter.

Neville has a black Salvador Dali mustache, curled up at the ends. Luna cocks her head to one side and says, without a shred of irony, "You look quite attractive this way, Neville."

"George!" shouts Molly.

George grins at his mother across the room, and as they lock eyes, something in their dynamic changes forever. Angelina sees it happen. Molly's prankster son with the tragically late twin becomes Molly's resilient son who jests with those he loves because it's who he is, it's what he can do. He can make light in darkness. He can laugh even when bereft. And she can't chide him for that. In fact, instead of shouting, she tears up and giggles and doesn't drop George's gaze. They understand one another completely. And they look so grateful for each other. They're embracing with their eyes.

Around them, the whole room vibrates with chortles. Hermione is doubled over with snorts; Fleur is making very French, almost orgasmic-sounding laughs; Ron is cracking more jokes for Ginny's benefit.

Somehow, though, everyone hears a soft snuffle of joy from the blue-haired baby in Andromeda's arms. Teddy Lupin's first laugh.

At this moment, giggling with his godfather's adopted, extended family, Teddy is well and truly one of them. He has claimed them.

"Welcome to the party, Ted," says Angelina. "And you," she continues, turning to George, "you need to find me some more cake, or have your best hair-removal spell at the ready, because I am not passing up dessert."

"Have at it. I like a woman with a mustache," says George, grinning.

Shaking her head at him, she lifts a forkful of velvety cake to her mouth. He stops her with a kiss. Presses his lips to hers lightly. It happens so fast and ends so swiftly that no one else notices. Her breath catches. As he turns his cheek and pulls away, his red-gold eyelashes drag across her cheek. The sensation is at once familiar and unfamiliar. Fred and not-Fred. George her friend and George her maybe-something-else.

"I like a woman without a mustache, too," says George, shrugging. "I'm flexible."

Angelina realizes she is a little bit smitten with him, just now.


End file.
